A troubled life.
Daughter of an executed father.
Mother of an executed son, herself put under the knife.
But a blameless life, to a priest a mother.

No trial was possible.
There was no treasonable evidence.
Executed by an attainder all too risible.
Not for what she did but for what she was, innocent in every sense.

Loyal to her faith.
Her crime, mother to author Reginald’s De Unitate.
Cromwell could find no crime, her inner truth, she saith.
De Laudate.

At the scaffold she still had the courage a statement to make.
Her last words, blessed are they who suffer persecution for righteousness sake.